I want him to bemymuse too.
So I lower myself into the hole and aim the tip of my knife at the assassin’s widening pupil. Maybe I’m a bad person, but anyone who comes for my man belongs in the corpse chute.
Ratimir squeaks impatiently and climbs my leg as the assassin mumbles incoherently. Is he begging for his life? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I press the knife straight through his eye, into his brain. There's resistance as the knife sinks too far, meeting something that shouldn't be touched by a blade.
The man makes a gurgle dragged out of deep inside him, but then his jaw slackens.
I gag.
The smell of blood hits me even harder when I pull the knife out. Hot, coppery, it makes bile rise in my throat.
I struggle to look at him again, but I have to make sure he’s dead.
His eye is ruined, blood seeping down his temple. The hand that was reaching for the phone has fallen limp.
Ratimir clings to my foot when I back away from the hole. He’s squeaking softly as if to remind me I need to follow him.
I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’ve just killed a man. Sure, he was on the verge of death already, butIdid that. If cops arrived here now, I’d be going to prison. I’m an accomplice. But that’s a thought for me to deal with later. I need to find Seva.
My chest feels too tight, my breaths are shallow and fast. I wipe the knife on my pants with trembling fingers, and as the world sways around me I brace myself against the wall before once more following Ratimir. We’re going back down, and the burning scent intensifies. Is it possible that one of Seva’s traps was a flamethrower? Wouldn’t that be reckless, even in a house that’s mostly rock and concrete?
The rat is impatient, but it must appreciate me carrying him back downstairs. Still, once he’s back on the floor, his tiny pink paws move faster, and I press my hand to the wall in the hallway, supporting my emotionally-drained body back to the kitchen. Once again, that scent, and soon after, I spot a pool of water on the floor by the stairs leading into the studio.
My heart stops, only to rush when I dash past Ratimir and up the steps.
The closer I get to the studio, the worse the smell becomes.
The air changes first. It’s heavier, damp and soaked through with the sour sting of burned paint and scorched wood. The corridor walls are wet from the sprinklers, blackened streaks running down like tears for all the lost artwork.
For a moment, I can’t make myself step inside, because my mind offers up images of Seva crushed, burned, unrecognizable beneath the devastation.
Then Ratimir squeaks and darts ahead.
I walk in, taking in this absolute calamity. Water pours from broken pipes, pooling on the floor, small canvasesfloat face down like corpses, others lie burned and blackened, frames broken, paint cracked.
Even now, the heat in here hits me in waves, but as I hold back tears, I look around in panic.
“Seva?” I call out, stepping around the spilled pigments creating rainbows in the puddles of water.
The deathly silence that follows has me choking on a sob, but then, a pile of planks resting on the floor in the back stirs, and I hurry that way. I keep calling his name, but when I throw aside the canvas underneath the rubble, my voice breaks, because he is there—still alive but swollen, with discolored skin. His fingers are curled against the floor as if he’s tried to claw his way free and simply… ran out of strength. Water beads on his red arm, sliding over burns that make my stomach turn.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, the words feeling meaningless in the face of his pain. I kneel next to him, head blank. “Seva? Seva, I’m here.”
His eye cracks open, just as blue as I remember, and he reaches out the reddened hand toward me. “You stayed.”
The words hit me harder than the sight of him like this. Tears well up in my eyes, even though he’s the one suffering. “Of course I did. I’ve got you. Come on, let’s get you out of here and to a hospital.”
“No!” He stirs, opening his eyes wide, and his breath comes out in erratic huffs. “Here. Stay home!”
I sob out my helplessness even though I’m already getting up. His burns need to be under water. I can’t even imagine the pain he must be in. I know enough to realize that what I’m seeing now might not be the whole scope of the damage. “A doctor needs to see you!”
And yet there’s method to his madness. The assassins are most definitely real, and he will be vulnerable at a hospital. My hands shake as I push away the rest of the massive canvas under which he’s trapped.
Ratimir scampers onto Seva’s chest, squeaking anxiously, little paws pattering over damp fabric. Seva makes a weak sound that might be a laugh or a sob.
“Good boy. Knew I could count on you to find our favorite person,” he mumbles, stroking his pet with one trembling finger the size of a sausage. This is bad.Bad.
I take a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts. I see no open wounds, just a lot of redness. Maybe if I put him into a cold tub, and then use some kind of salve, it would be enough? There is lots of medicine in the panic room, and instructions on how to use it all too.
